Who and what he's talking about, in plain English. Read this and you'll catch every reference.
Almost every enemy Netanyahu names belongs to one family: Islamist terrorism. Islamism is a political movement that wants to rule society by its own hard-line version of Islamic law and treats violence as a legitimate way to get there. The groups below disagree on plenty, and some are Sunni while others are Shia, but they share one goal: Israel wiped off the map.
Most of them are armed and paid by one country: the Islamic Republic of Iran.
→ How Israel tries to prevent civilian deaths in war
The mother organization of modern Sunni Islamist movements. Founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, it now has branches across the Muslim world and the West. Its motto ends: "Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."
Its ideas run straight into modern terrorism. Its leading thinker, Sayyid Qutb, shaped the worldview of al-Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri joined the Brotherhood as a teenager. Hamas is officially its Palestinian wing. Hamas's own 1988 charter says so in Article 2.
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Russia ban it as a terrorist organization. In January 2026 the U.S. designated its Lebanese branch a Foreign Terrorist Organization and sanctioned its Egyptian and Jordanian branches as terrorists for backing Hamas. The Sudanese branch followed in March.
When Bibi asks the West to choose "the brotherhood of democracies or the Muslim Brotherhood," this is who he means.
The name is an acronym for "Islamic Resistance Movement." Born in 1987 out of the Muslim Brotherhood, it has ruled Gaza since seizing it by force in 2007. Its founding charter calls for killing Jews and destroying Israel.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas fighters broke through the border and went house to house: about 1,200 people murdered, mostly civilians, and 251 dragged into Gaza as hostages. It was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Bibi's math: proportionally, that is 40,000 Americans, or sixteen 9/11s.
"The Party of God." A Shia Islamist militia built by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon in the early 1980s, on Israel's northern border. Its forerunners carried out the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing that killed 241 U.S. service members. Before this war it had an arsenal Bibi puts at 150,000 rockets and missiles, all aimed at Israel. It started firing on Israel on October 8, 2023, the day after the massacre.
"Remember the beepers?" In September 2024, Israel pulled off one of the most daring intelligence operations in history. Through front companies, it sold Hezbollah thousands of pagers and radios with explosives hidden inside. On September 17, the pagers went off all at once across Lebanon and Syria, in the pockets and hands of Hezbollah members from foot soldiers to commanders. The next day the walkie-talkies exploded. Over two days, 42 people were killed and roughly 3,500 wounded, the vast majority Hezbollah operatives. About a dozen civilians, including two children, also died. Hezbollah's entire communications network was gutted in two days.
Ten days later, Israel killed Hezbollah's longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
An Iran-backed Shia Islamist militia that controls much of Yemen, at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Their official slogan says it all: "God is great, death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, victory to Islam." Since 2023 they've fired missiles and drones at Israel and attacked commercial ships in the Red Sea, choking one of the world's busiest shipping lanes. That is what Bibi means by fanatics "choking your waterways."
Armed groups funded, trained and directed by Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Several are U.S.-designated terrorist groups that have also attacked American troops in the region. They've fired drones and rockets at Israel throughout this war.
Officially the "Islamic Republic." Ruled since 1979 by Shia clerics, "the Ayatollahs," whose crowds chant "Death to America, death to Israel." Its Revolutionary Guard Corps is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, and it arms nearly every group on this page. It has crushed its own people's protests with mass killings.
2026 Iran war: On Feb 28, 2026, the U.S. and Israel struck Iran together, wrecking its military and nuclear sites. Iran fired about a thousand ballistic missiles at Israeli cities. A ceasefire has held since spring.
Bibi's phrase for the last three years. Israel, a country the size of New Jersey, fought on seven fronts at once: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Iran itself, militias in Iraq, militias in Syria, and terrorists in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Every one of them is either Iran or Islamist, and most are both.
Montreal: He lists it among cities where Jews were murdered. Police say that killing may not have been a targeted antisemitic attack. The other cities he names check out.
"Hassan," who said America deserved 9/11: streamer Hasan Piker, from a 2019 clip.